Bloomberg recently announced the creation of a new website that will provide audiences with important reporting on the economic and business implications of climate change. The move comes at a time when big businesses around the world are urging governments to take action as they increasingly recognize the reality and the risk of climate change.
On April 20, the Huffington Post reported that “Bloomberg, the titan of business and financial journalism, is adding a site devoted to climate science and the future of energy to its sprawling news empire.” The website, ClimateChanged.com, will serve as “a hub for coverage of how rising global temperatures are changing the planet and moving financial markets.”
Bloomberg’s Sustainability Editor Eric Roston explained the decision, stating, “Climate change is fundamentally an economic story, it’s an economic problem. . . . It’s naturally a business story and it’s naturally a concern to rationally minded executives in any sized enterprise.” And Jared Sandberg, senior executive editor in Bloomberg’s digital division, said, “[Climate change is] the mother of all risk. . . . If you have intelligence agencies around the world identifying climate change as one of the great, destabilizing forces, there’s a massive risk to contend with for any business and any investor behind it.”
The Huffington Post added that Climate Changed would give Bloomberg “a leg up” over its competitors, particularly The Wall Street Journal: “The Rupert Murdoch-owned newspaper’s hard-line conservativism appears to have bled over from the opinion pages to the news section. A study published in 2015 by researchers at Rutgers University, the University of Michigan and the University of Oslo found that from 2006 to 2011, the Journal’s news reporting rarely mentioned threats or effects of climate change, compared with the country’s other leading broadsheet newspapers.”
Bloomberg’s decision to launch a website dedicated to the impact of climate change on world economies and businesses is a particularly timely one. In recent months, businesses have become increasingly vocal about the need to address climate change. Big companies, including ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips, renewable energy groups, and major American manufacturers such as General Electric are pressuring President Donald Trump to keep the U.S. in the Paris climate agreement. And after Trump took his biggest step yet towards rolling back former President Barack Obama’s “environmental legacy,” Buzzfeed News reported that “billion-dollar corporations” have said that “they'll keep on battling carbon pollution regardless of what the government says” because “climate change is a significant concern for their business.”
From the Huffington Post article:
The data and media giant on Thursday launched ClimateChanged.com, a hub for coverage of how rising global temperatures are changing the planet and moving financial markets.
“Climate change is fundamentally an economic story, it’s an economic problem,” Eric Roston, Bloomberg’s sustainability editor, told The Huffington Post in an interview on Tuesday. “It’s naturally a business story and it’s naturally a concern to rationally minded executives in any sized enterprise.”
The site fits comfortably into Bloomberg’s stable of products, anchored by its lucrative data terminal business. In December 2015, just before 195 countries reached the historic emissions-cutting deal known as the Paris Agreement, Bloomberg published its Carbon Clock, featuring a carbon dioxide tracker overlaid on satellite images of the Earth. The company owns Bloomberg New Energy Finance, a data firm dedicated to the energy industry. Michael Bloomberg, who returned to his namesake company after his third term as New York City mayor, is an outspoken climate advocate, who this week published a book with former Sierra Club chief Carl Pope on how cities and businesses can lead energy reform.
[. . .]
Climate Changed gives Bloomberg a leg up on The Wall Street Journal, arguably its chief competitor in the market for prestige journalism. The Rupert Murdoch-owned newspaper’s hard-line conservativism appears to have bled over from the opinion pages to the news section. A study published in 2015 by researchers at Rutgers University, the University of Michigan and the University of Oslo found that from 2006 to 2011, the Journal’s news reporting rarely mentioned threats or effects of climate change, compared with the country’s other leading broadsheet newspapers.
[. . .]
“[Climate change is] the mother of all risk,” [senior executive editor in Bloomberg’s digital division Jared] Sandberg added. “If you have intelligence agencies around the world identifying climate change as one of the great, destabilizing forces, there’s a massive risk to contend with for any business and any investor behind it.”
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